My late husband, Don, was a computer technician, back in the days when all computers were mainframes, even back in the days of analog computers, which used vacuum tubes. Most people now don't even know what that means.
Vacuum tubes were the devices that made radios and TVs work, in those long-ago days. (When something went wrong with your radio or TV, you had to look in the back of the set for a "black" tube, then take it to a store (usually a big drugstore), where you could plug it into a machine that told you what model-number tube you needed. You then bought the tube from the friendly store clerk, who knew virtually nothing about TVs or radios or their tubes. Then you took it home and replaced it yourself.
Before we were married, Don took me to his place of employment, one evening, where they manufactured big (of course) mainframe computers; there weren't any other kind. He didn't really show me anything I could understand, except that he sat down and quickly wrote a small program (probably in BASIC) that made the printer print out, over and over, "Don loves Toni."
In those days, all printers were "line printers," which printed out "whatever" one line at a time, in dot-matrix format, on special folded-paper, usually with green and white horizontal stripes, with left and right margins consisting of a strip with holes in them, to allow the printer to advance the paper one line at a time. After whatever was printed, you had to strip off the margins and tear the pages apart. The paper was punctured appropriately, to make the whole process easier.
I was suitably impressed.
After he printed out some number of pages, Don stopped the program from printing. Then, instead of deleting the program, he changed it so that it would then print out "I love you."
So that was my introduction to computers.
Vacuum tubes were the devices that made radios and TVs work, in those long-ago days. (When something went wrong with your radio or TV, you had to look in the back of the set for a "black" tube, then take it to a store (usually a big drugstore), where you could plug it into a machine that told you what model-number tube you needed. You then bought the tube from the friendly store clerk, who knew virtually nothing about TVs or radios or their tubes. Then you took it home and replaced it yourself.
Before we were married, Don took me to his place of employment, one evening, where they manufactured big (of course) mainframe computers; there weren't any other kind. He didn't really show me anything I could understand, except that he sat down and quickly wrote a small program (probably in BASIC) that made the printer print out, over and over, "Don loves Toni."
In those days, all printers were "line printers," which printed out "whatever" one line at a time, in dot-matrix format, on special folded-paper, usually with green and white horizontal stripes, with left and right margins consisting of a strip with holes in them, to allow the printer to advance the paper one line at a time. After whatever was printed, you had to strip off the margins and tear the pages apart. The paper was punctured appropriately, to make the whole process easier.
I was suitably impressed.
After he printed out some number of pages, Don stopped the program from printing. Then, instead of deleting the program, he changed it so that it would then print out "I love you."
So that was my introduction to computers.
1 comment:
My brother pointed out to me that analog computers do not necessarily use vacuum tubes. The key difference between analog computers and digital computers is that analog computers use dials for controls and indicators. To control something, you turn a dial with your fingers. To see what is happening, you look at a dial with a needle to indicate the value of an output.
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